Archive for July, 2009

Grady Sizemore hitting a double in slo-mo taken at an Athletics game with my super Casio FC100

I’ve been totally Baseballized over the last few months.

I love it. I love the mind boggling stats, I love the fact that a lot of people hate it and I love the whole social aura around going to a live game.

The fact that I am now a Cleveland Indians by proxy does not deter me even when they are going through one of the most tumultuous times in their history with bad results and a mass culling trading of their big names.

That’s fine. I come from supporting my home town football team Dundalk; who are the most successful teams in Irish football history. But not when I’ve been following. We have languished in the lower division for most of the time I have supported them A major high point was the winning of the FAI Cup in 2002. That gave me enough to go on for another 7 years.

Anyway I digress. So now I watch live games on mlb.tv which is a fantastic service. Even if you don’t pay you get to watch condensed matches.

As previously stated I saw a couple of Indians games when I was in Cleveland. It’s a great experience even if they don’t win. Which is common. I love the hot dogs. I like beer but I don’t like paying 7$ for a can of watery Miller or Coors Lite. Ugh, get real please Indians Catering Department. If there is one.

I love the hot dogs so much I bought a pack of National Hebrew hot dogs here in City Super for about 500 US Dollars…well not that much but ball park figure. They taste pretty good in fact and quite similar to the baseball dawgs.

It’s pretty sad though. I bought a mitt and a ball while in America; I thoroughly enjoyed some good pitching with my bro-in-law but now I throw from one hand to the other while watching TV. I try not to miss catching the ball resulting in a broken window and a baseball landing on somebody far down below with the force of an elephant.

I had to make that title work somehow and well, yeah, it’s as good as it’s going to get I’m afraid.
I never noticed the word “fun” in funeral before, weird, and we don’t pronounce it as “fun” either. And we rarely have fun at them. Rarely. Well we certainly had fun numerous times over the last couple of weeks…so there!

Anyway, I digress. We are back in Honkers. It’s strange yet familiar. Easier arriving than last year, of course, and we know where everything is by now.

Let’s start at the beginning. The majority of people reading this have probably seen me over the last month so they know what has gone down but let me “timeline” it to annoy you all.

June 20th:
We leave Honkers at midnight on British Airways to London. About 12hr 30mins flight time. I was expecting much more from BA on this route, especially on their newer 777s. Unfortunately their personal TVs were a major let down and were not On Demand which meant you had to wait around for the movies to replay themselves. I went a little stir crazy. The only movie I remember watching was Coraline and I lost interest near the end after a quite entertaining beginning and middle.
Transit through Heathrow, 5000 security checks and a hell hole of a waiting area for Aer Lingus flight to Dublin.

Ahhh, Dublin Airport; how I loathe thee. Crap immigration set-up for non-Euros. Ten or twelve booths manned by 3 Neanderthals. I hung around 20/30 minutes for Sharyn to get through.
Budget Car Rental was an appalling experience. Line going out their little cabin and then no cars available. Never again. I hate Dublin Airport. What a welcome home.

June 21st-July 3rd in Ireland
We had a small matter of a wedding to get through. To cut a very long story short it was a fantastic day for everyone involved; not only Sharyn and I. The sun shone and the reception was a fantastic event in beautiful surroundings at The Four Seasons in Carlingford. Friends from home, friends from afar. Family from afar, family from home. And Rock The Boat.

Rock The Boat. This wouldn’t be the last we would see of this.

July 3rd-July 22nd in Cleveland

So time flew and after numerous good-byes and farewells we headed for Cleveland via Chicago with American Airlines. I have flown this route many times and it always works out for me (immigration was done for me within 20 seconds of stepping up to the booth). We had a delay in O’Hare and played a game of Musical Gates for a while but we got to CLE in the end.

The weather was hotter but the “fun” continued. A couple of baseball games (2 loses for the Indians), a kick-ball game (fascinating!) and a tee-ball game (a win for my nephew!) then it was time for our wedding party American-stylee. But not quite yet. My mouth decided it was time for a root canal the day before our party. So I spent a day in Sears (a department store, yes, I was confused) in a dental office getting the aforementioned work done. Lovely. Told me not to drink at our party the next day but after much deliberating and peer pressure I did anyway.

Was happy that my old friend Niall could hop over from New Yawk and Michelle and Matt popped in on their tour of USA.
The difference between Irish and American weddings are free booze (although in Ireland we got a bit of a free bar going much to the shock of the natives!) and more choreographed dancing! But, yes, I bought the Rock The Boat over the waters to add to the dancing and the DJs will now be raking it in when they include it in their repertoire. Another excellent night with friends and family.

Three lines of Rock The Boat. We do things BIG in America!!

July 22nd to…NOW. Back in Honkers

A 14hrs 47 minute flight from Toronto is probably seen by visitors to this planet as some sort of torture to people who have done very bad things. In fairness Air Canada try to alleviate your suffering with a quality On-Demand TV, electrical socket, usb port, 3 meal services and plenty of water runs. Still the time is immense and one that you may like to keep down to once or twice (the return) a year.

It’s very hard to write down in one post about our time in Ireland and America. It was a blur of fun, family and friends. And it’s always sad to leave. But leave we must and we are back in very humid Honkers. It rains at the drop of a hat. No warnings of little dribbles from the sky, just a whooosh of wet. We have shopped and shopped some more for our staple things trying to forget about the stuff we could get and eat in abundance in America. We have got back in to the swing of Honkers living; walking slowly amongst the slow walkers, dodging the leaky air conditioners and catching up with bills and TV shows!

I have booked a weeks holiday in Hua Hin in Thailand from the 10th, just waiting on confirmation. Should be nice and relaxing but the weather in Asia is cloudy and rainy so we will not expect sun, sun, sun. We will expect eating, drinking and chillaxing. Looking forward to it.

I plan to “play” football on Saturday. I don’t doubt my 0% of fitness so I hope my football brain will get me through. I’ve already shaved my head in preparedness for the heat onslaught. And because I like shaving my head now.